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User blog:Oldrose/The Beginning
THE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OF A MUSICAL CALLED JEKYLL & HYDE BY STEVE CUDEN. Published in''' March 30, 1996''', Issue No. 1 of The Dregs, the Original Fan Newsletter First of all, let me introduce myself to all of you wonderfully rabid, die-hard fans of "Jekyll & Hyde." For those of you who have seen the show program, posters, or advertising for the show, you may have noticed my name located in the credits below the title in a rather cryptic line that reads, "Conceived For The Stage By Steve Cuden And Frank Wildhorn." If you ever wondered what that credit really means, or who Steve Cuden is, I wrote the original version of "Jekyll & Hyde" with Frank. Not once, but two separate times, before Leslie Bricusse became involved. Because there has been almost no media coverage on the early development of Jekyll & Hyde, most of you are likely to be unaware of how far back its history goes. You may be aware of some of the show's more recent history, but you probably don't know that the show is in reality now over 15 years old. Or that it had a shot at Broadway once before in 1988. Here, then, from my perspective, is a capsule version of how "Jekyll & Hyde" came to be: In January, 1997, I had already graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Theater, when I met Frank, who was then still a student. After graduation, I had stayed on to work at the School of Thearter as the School's Master Electrician. I was a struggling writer who happened to be good with stage lighting, and therefore the job. Frank had managed to convince John Houseman, then head of the School of Theater, to produce a musical he had written, called "Christopher" (which, curiously enough, starred an undergraduate student with a huge voice named Chuck Wagner). The show opened in February, 1997, and, as Master Electrician, I had been responsible for overseeing the installation of the show's llighting design. I was also assigned the task of operating the lighting board during performances. And that is where I really began to know Frank. He watched every performance, save for opening night, from the lighting booth, and we spent much time taling about writing in general, but writing musicals in particular. Not long after the show closed its two week engagement, we got together to pal around and to actually try writing together. Things clicked between us, both socially and creatively. And over the next year and half we actually wrote three musicals. The first thing we attempted was called "The High And Mightly Caesar," and was based on the life and times of that laugh-riot, Julius Caesar. The work we created was really more of a double album's worth of songs than a fully fleshed out show, but it whetted our appetite to try more. The second piece we wrote was titledThe Last Tsar," and revolved around the wild ending of the Romanov Dnasty in Russia, and the tragic lives of Nicholas, Alexandra, and their doomed family. This was definitely more of a theatrical endeavor than the Caesar project, but we were still learning. Neither show has evre been produced except by way of very simple studio demos. And curiously, it didn't dawn on me until years later that the words Caesar and Tsr mean essentially the same think in different languages. By the Spring of 1980, we were kicking around new subjects and ideas to tackle for our next musical. Both of us greatly admired Stephen Sondheim's magnum opus, "Sweeney Todd." Its brooding, bloody subject matter heavily influenced us to do something in a Gothic vein. We toyed with several ideas: "Phantom Of The Opera" (years before Webber ever dreamed of it), "Dracula," "Frankenstein," and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," obviously settling on the latter. We thought Stevenson's story, through devoid of much plot, and with no love story at all (in fact, there is only one mention of one woman on one page in the entire work) was actually full of theatrical opportunities. And so we began our thrid musical endeavor, "Dr. Jekyll An Mr. Hyde," in the summer of 1980. Soon after we got started, a record producer, Howard Stark, became interested in producing the show. We recorded a demo tape of the work, using just four voices and Frank at the piano. The part of Jekyll and Hyde was played by that guy with the huge voice, Chuck Wagner. That's how far back Chuck's involvement with the project goes - right to the very beginning. We shopped the show around, and found interest to be less than favorable, and by Spring o 1981, Frank and I, somewhat disheartened, abandoned the work - at least for the time being. But over the next few years, we continued talking about the good doctor and his depraved alter-ego, and in that way kept the flame lit, if not quite burning brightly. While I pursued other writing opportunities, and also designed the lighting of quite a few shows around Los Angele;, Frank, with other partners, began writing a lot of pop songs - some meeting great success. During those next few years we continued to research and discuss a variety of subjects that we hoped to musicalize; The Borgias; a show set in an insane asylum called "Soup To Nuts;" a show about dancers called "Whirl," among others. But nothing really grabbed us and held our attention. Flash forward to 1985....Frank and I began having an ongoing succession of serious discussions about reworking "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which had never really left our hearts and minds. We decided to give it another crack, determined to get it right. We started in earnest in January of 1986, and for the next seven months we worked five to six days a week, side by side at Frank's piano, on the newly retitled, snappier sounding "Jekyll & Hyde." As we dug in, we decided to keep just a single chunk of the original 1980 show, one that remains in the show to this day: "Murder, Murder." We rewrote the lyrics to "Murder, Murder" in 1986, and they have been further reworked since, but the piece still owes its heart to the original 1980 version A few months into the work, before we even finished writing Act I, we had the privilege to play what we had for Milt Okun, who owns Cherry Lane Music Publishing (they publish a vast library of music, including the "Jekyll & Hyde" songbooks). Milt was instantly attracted to the show, and decided he wated to produce it. He took an option on the unfinished work, gave us a little seed money, and we kept on working. By August of 1986, we had completed a first draft of the musical, and Milt was pleased enough to go forward with pursuing a production. He brought in a friend of his, producer Hal Thau, to set things in motion for real. In December of 1986, we cut a fully orchestrated demo tape of a selection of only ten or eleven songs (orchestrated by the wonderful Kim Scharnberg, who is still involved as the show's orchestrtor), with Chuck Wagner, once again singing Jekyll and Hyde. During 1987, while Frank and I worked on our next show, called "Vienna" ( now called "Rufolf," which is based on the strange, sordid story of the last Crown Prince of Austro-Hungary, Prince Rudolf, and how he met his fate at his hunting lodge, Mayerling), a company was formed in New York to take "Jekyll & Hyde" to Broadway. Terrence Mann, a well known Broadway performer, became interested in playing the dual role, and was signed. The producers brought in a director, choreographer, designers, etc., and by November 1987, Frank and I sat in the intimate Promenade Theater in New York actually watching the show being cast for Broadway. Unfortunately, that is as close as we ever got. You may recall, one month prior to that, in October 1987, the stock market took its most serious nose dive in nearly fifty years, dropping over five-hundred points in one day. And as those times rapidly became financially dicey, by January 1, 1988, all the funding backed out causing the bubble around the show to burst. The whole thing collapsed like a house of cards, and Frank and I retreated to figure out our next move. For the next couple of months, while attempts were being made to find another backer, a decision was made to maybe try and attach a "name" to the project, someone who might be able to grease the wheels and move the show along further faster. In March, 1988, Frank and I played the show (we used to perform the entire thing, cover to cover, singing all the songs, and acting all the parts - an amusing two hour and fifteen minute spectable if ever there was one) for Leslie Bricusse in his home in Beverly Hills. Leslie immediately expressed interest in working on the show. But I was informed that he normally doesn't share book or lyric credis with anyone, and I was subsequently asked to step aside, which I did. Frank and I parted company not long after that. It is from that point on that the media has mostly covered. But you can see, there was a great deal of time, effort, and energy invested in the work prior to Leslie's involvement. While at least a third of the current production retains a substantial amont of the lyrics that Frank and I wrote (Frank and I shared book and lyric credit on the original), even more of our original words have been recorded on the "Complete Work" double CD, both lyrically and in dialogue. And that, in a nutshell, is a bit of the back story you won't find in the press kits. It is gratifying to me to see that the work is finally getting the recognition I believe it has so long deserved. As you move through all your days, keep in mind that, "The only thing constant is change!" ~o~ Steve Cuden has a wide ranging background in Theater and Television. Aside from writing the original versions of the musical "Jekyll & Hyde," he has also written two other musicals with composer Frank Wildhorn. Currently he is a screenwriter, with over 40 TV credits to his name. Oldrose (talk) 01:15, September 30, 2012 (UTC) Category:Blog posts